Ok, so I finally got around to putting something down to update our long neglected guide. Put any suggestions for things that I've missed in and I'll add them in as we go. Also I'm sure I've put spelling mistakes in there somewhere and the grammar ***** will call me out on it, but its late and I'm tired and I've just finished vomiting several pages of stuff on priests into my editor so sue me :P

---Introduction: Why a shadowpriest?---

Shadowpriests in Wrath of the Lich King fill the role of damage dealing casters. They can do competitive damage at present and are able to bring various raid buffs and debuffs. Prior to patch 3.3 shadowpriests had issues with damage scaling and were beginning to be excluded at high end content. However, with the introduction of haste scaling buffs they now appear to be well equipped for the future.

Shadowpriests bring various advantages to your party or raid groups these primarily: Replenishment - a raidwide mana regeneration buff for 10 players Misery - a 3% spell hit debuff applied to enemies Spirit/Stamina/Shadow protection buffs - While not strictly specific to shadowpriests these buffs are nevertheless worthwhile mentioning as holy or disc priests may be absent in 10 man raids or 5 man heroics for example.

At present levels of gear shadowpriest damage compares well to most DPS classes although is usually beaten by equally well played/geared rogues, mages and hunters.

The aim of this guide is to answer the most important questions that are usually asked by players wishing to start playing the class. It will not cover the aspects of PvP play as that is beyond my knowledge. It will also not discuss specific gear items as such as these are numerous and are already well documented elsewhere, although it will explain how to best judge items with regard to upgrading your character. Links to appropriate gear lists will also be provided.

First things first, the race of your priest is now unimportant, none of the racial abilities will make a significant difference to your character so choose what you like. The first thing to do when creating any new character is to get the spec right. Fortunately in the case of shadowpriests the specs vary very little and are relatively easy to remember but more on that later.

The talents most used in shadowpriest specs are as follows: Note: Talents marked with (*) are considered pretty much vital in any shadowpriest build and should not be missed out.

The reason for going so far into the discipline tree is to get at least 2 points in meditation. It allows shadowpriests to regenerate mana based on their sprit stat whilst still casting. This is of vital importance since the changes to how haste affects shadowpriests' damage over time spells as the overal use of mana significantly increased with this change. The talents picked up along the way are useful also, improved inner fire giving increased spellpower and twin disciplines giving a flat dps increase on instant cast spells are great. Improved fortitude is used mainly as a filler in this case to get to meditation although it provides some nice utility and is superior to the other talent options. Inner fire is an optional talent which some shadowpriests choose to take although in general terms it provides relatively little DPS increase for the cost of a talent point.

SpecsPrior to T10 the most commonly used shadowpriest spec looks something like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbhZZGxfVRfzcfqfzAoIt ticks all the major PvE requirements though some people like to move a couple of points around here and there (shadow affinity is a common choice for certain cases)

However, once you get to the stage of T10 the 4 Set bonus actually increases the damage done by mind flay so much that it appears to beat mind blast in terms of rotation priority. This leads to a build that looks like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZZGgf0RfzffqfzAo

Note that the points previously spent in Improved Mind Blast have been reallocated to Inner Focus, Shadow Affinity and Improved VE. These spare points obviously allow for more variations although these are the most likely choices. I haven't been able to test this setup myself yet, although from what I can tell it should be better suited once the set bonus is achieved.

GlyphsShadowpriest Glyphs are very easy to choose, the best ones are: Glyph of Shadow Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain Glyph of Mind Flay Glyph of Mind Sear/Glyph of Dispersion (These are utility glyphs which are useful in certain boss encounters and are also valid choices)

Now that we know how to allocate our talents properly, the next important decision is gear. To understand which gear is best for a shadowpriest we need to understand which stats provide the best damage increase per point. The following figures are correct as of patch 3.3

Parts of this section are shamelessly stolen from shadowpriest.com, for full details and more in depth discussion than is within the scope of this guide you should check out their pages.

Int: 0.22 Spi: 0.59 SP: 1.00 Hit: 1.88* Crit: 0.76 Haste: 0.98

The higher the number, the larger the worth of the stat in the list. * An important note on hit rating - this value is correct when you have less hit than the hit cap, when you are equal to or over the hit cap, the value of hit rating is exactly 0. Which brings us conveniently to:

Hit RatingAs can be seen above, hit rating is the most important stat on any shadowpriest (or any caster for that matter). The game works in such a way that your spells by default have a chance to miss a boss. This is overcome by hit rating and hit talents. The following list shows the hit caps for various cases you may encounter.

* 263 hit is the cap with 6 points between Shadow Focus and Misery and with a Draenei in your group * 289 hit is the cap with 6 points between Shadow Focus and Misery * 315 hit before you can go to 5 points between Shadow Focus and Misery * 341 hit before you can go to 4 points between Shadow Focus and Misery * 368 hit before you can go to 3 points between Shadow Focus and Misery * 394 hit before you can go to 2 points between Shadow Focus and Misery * 420 hit before you can go to 1 point between Shadow Focus and Misery * 446 hit before you can go to 0 points between Shadow Focus and Misery

Once we have established that we have enough hit rating we can start choosing gear based on the other stats. Spellpower and haste being the most obvious candidates. Crit is also good but as can be seen above, it doesn't give as much of a damage increase per point as the other two. Another important thing to notice is that there are no set haste plateaus or caps that are yet known. That is, there is no point at which additional haste causes issues to spell rotations that are known of at the moment. One thing that you should note about using large amounts of haste however is that it will eventually begin to impact on your mana pool. Whilst shadowpriests are actually really mana efficient in general (with dispersion and shadowfiend to bail us out) there will come a point where the amount of haste you are using puts a noticable drain on your mana, especially in multiple target fights so plan accordingly.

GemsGems for shadowpriests are actually pretty easy. Your head meta gem will be a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond as it is the best choice for pretty much all casters, and your other slots will be filled with spellpower and spellpower/haste gems unless there is some insanely good blue socket bonus (in which case you'll use it for one of your blue gems for the meta). Your blue gems for the meta gem will be 2 purple gems with the 'purified' spirit/spellpower cut.

Shadowpriests have 6 primary single target damage dealing spells, these are: Vampiric Touch (VT) Devouring Plague (DP) Shadow Word: Pain (SW:P) Mind Blast (MB) Mind Flay (MF) Shadow Word: Death (SW:D) The notations in brackets are the commonly accepted abbreviations of the spell names and are widely used when discussing shadowpriest spells. Note to newcomers: Damage over time spells like VT DP and SW:P are referred to as DoTs in shorthand.

Single TargetThe way that shadow priests use these spells is to cast them in a priority system, that is, the spell with the highest priority should always take prescedence over spells with lower priority. The priority sequence (from highest priority to lowest) for the most part is as follows: VT DP (SW:P) This should be constantly be refreshed by mind flay so should only be cast once for the most part. MB MF SW:D

As you can see, the highest priority for the spell rotation is to keep the DoT spells rolling. Following that the priority is to cast Mind Blast and then Mind Flay. SW:D can be used as a filler spell for cases where you are waiting for mind blast to come off cooldown in about a second or so.

Post T10 4 set bonusYes, it strikes again. With the set bonus from this tier the priority order actually appears to change to this: VT DP (SW:P) This should be constantly be refreshed by mind flay so should only be cast once for the most part. MF MB SW:D

In this case MB is used more as a filler spell, and to proc replenishment of course. It is uncertain whether or not this is intended by Blizzard or whether or not they are going to do anything about it. Nevertheless, this is how things appear to stand for now.

Multiple Target StrategyOne of the ares in which Shadowpriests alongside affliction warlocks really shine is the ability to be damaging many targets at once. in fights like this you have two choices. 1) You can use Mind Sear. Mind Sear is an amazing AoE spell, it gives you AoE damage second only to mages and is great for large groups and encounters where you have more than 3 targets active at once. In these cases mind sear is almost always the best choice. 2) You can DoT multiple targets. This is where the true ability of a good shadowpriest shines through. This strategy is a must when dealing with groups of 3 or fewer targets and in large groups where the targets are not close enough to cover with a Mind Sear effectively. The aim is to keep VT, DP and SW:P rolling on your primary target and VT and SW:P rolling on your other targets. This means you will need to be switching targets as necessary and reapplying VT or refreshing SW:P where appropriate, try to prioritise refreshing SW:P first because if you let it drop off a target you will wind up having to recast it and eat into your precious casting time (as well as sucking your mana dry). The best way to practice this is to go to your local major city and practice keeping your dots rolling on 3 target dummies at once. Once you have that down you can start weaving MB into the mix to keep replenishment up. It isn't an easy skill but it is definitely worth your while once you know how.

AddonsAs you can probably guess, things are going to get complicated unless we have some help working out which spell we should be casting next. There are various addons that are designed for this purpose and a few of my favourites are listed below. Dot Timers - YOU WILL NEED A GOOD DOT TIMER, I cannot stress this enough. The dot timer addon is going to feed you the most information about the spells you currently have active on your target(s) and is integral to playing a shadowpriest. -Dotimer -DebufFilter -EventHorizon -Classtimers

Cast Bar - Replaces the nasty blizzard cast bar with one that shows your latency. This is important because if your latency is above 200 or so it will noticably impact your damage. By having a cast bar which shows your latency you can start casting your next spell when the cast bar reaches the marked latency are at the end of it. -Quartz (also can be used to track DoTs and marks your latency area in red)

The rest of your addons are largely at your discression and I won't take up needless space reeling of pages and pages of them, but the cast bar and DoT timer really are important to get right.

Skimming through this, everything looks to be easy to understand and well-written. However, the talk about dropping Mind Blast post-T10 was I felt a bit unclear. It seemed as if you could begin dropping MB from the priority once you obtained 4pc T10, while it's really much more complex than that. It depends on if you have 4pc T10 in addition to the amount of haste and spellpower you have. For example, gearing more haste would mean you would require less spellpower to reach this point, and gearing more spellpower means you would need less haste to reach this point as well. Meaning that you could be using Mind Blast regularly, but drop it during a Heroism/Bloodlust. That's confusing, I know, but the second link I posted below this has the exact numbers required before dropping MB is a benefit.

The math is showing that the number to shoot for to drop MB is (with 4 piece bonus Tier 10) over 900 haste and 4443 spell power. This is all while buffed, of course.

What I'm missing: - An index - Info on races, what the benefits of racials are for Spriests. (even if they are mostly insignificant) - Explanation on why the glyphs are good. - Info on cooldowns andwhen or how to use them, specifically Shadowfiend as it's a strong offensive cooldown as well as mana regen, which also makes it quite unique and for many people not easy to get everything out of. <probably fits well with the rotation part> - Some in depth text on the few movable/preference talents. - A section with helpful links - A section about leveling as Shadow including gearing, speccing, dpsing mobs that die fast and healing as shadow.

I'd remove the literal text for all talents and use just the explanation text as you did with the disc part (which is really useful) accompanied by links to specs. You'll always get Misery for the raidbuff so that's not needed in the hit part I think.

Other than that,

Edited, Jan 27th 2010 3:04pm by Aethien

____________________________

Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Shouldn't the weapon enchant be black magic? Unless you are haste capped? Don't quote me on this, but I thought that I had read over at elitist jerks(may have been shadowpriest.com) that the proc rate, value, and internal CD had made Black Magic equivalent to about 92 static spellpower, which is higher than either the staff or 1-handed enchant.

I'm going to have to look it up.

Edit to add:

Quote:

I'd remove the literal text for all talents and use just the explanation text as you did with the disc part (which is really useful) accompanied by links to specs.

He could just link the page for the talent, just like you do with gear, like this Spirit Tap.

That way you get both the description of the spell by mousing over it, and you can explain it's usefulness as well, without taking up a lot of body space.

Oh wait, are you suggesting he not even bother explaining each talent, and just link the specs and explain the overall spec?

Oh wait, are you suggesting he not even bother explaining each talent, and just link the specs and explain the overall spec?

Yes. Explaining each talent mostly just adds a lot of text that people aren't going to read anyway. Explaining the talent build and some important parts of it (the preference talent points and such) gives more info and less text.

And as a fellow sticky writer, it's a god damned lot of work and you always miss a lot

____________________________

Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Oh wait, are you suggesting he not even bother explaining each talent, and just link the specs and explain the overall spec?

Yes. Explaining each talent mostly just adds a lot of text that people aren't going to read anyway. Explaining the talent build and some important parts of it (the preference talent points and such) gives more info and less text.

And as a fellow sticky writer, it's a god damned lot of work and you always miss a lot

True, just explaining the overall spec noting key talents is a lot easier for both the writer and the reader, than having to post every single talent.

Thanks Mothra - I wouldn't be surprised if this sticky makes the priest boards the most up to date class boards on Alla =P. While you've already received my rate ups, I still need to thoroughly read this at some point to crank up my shadow priest knowledge. I'll make a mental note of that now.

Edit: Actually, it's less worse than I had in my mind. The druid, hunter, paladin and shaman FAQs all seem firmly up to date as well. The stickies for the remaining five classes are all pretty grossly outdated, though.

Shouldn't the weapon enchant be black magic? Unless you are haste capped? Don't quote me on this, but I thought that I had read over at elitist jerks(may have been shadowpriest.com) that the proc rate, value, and internal CD had made Black Magic equivalent to about 92 static spellpower, which is higher than either the staff or 1-handed enchant.

I'm going to have to look it up.

It's better for one-handers, but +81sp is still better for staves. I'll edit in a source when I get a sec to find it.

Edit: Actually, it's less worse than I had in my mind. The druid, hunter, paladin and shaman FAQs all seem firmly up to date as well.

Well duh.

____________________________

Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

A couple of things that may want to be added for clarity: The SP from IF does not occur until L71- this may cause some confusion to lower level priests who spec into it and notice no SP boost. Vampiric Embrace is a single point talent. If, for some reason, you choose not to be specced 3/3 Misery, remember that the rest of the casters in your group are probably counting on you for 3% of their hit, and it is imperative that you let the rl know. (There really is no reason to not be 3/3, just emphasizing an expectation of others from your class.)

Great post. I have heard some rumblings among among shadowpriests regarding Black Magic enchant if you are MH+OH. Any current info regarding that?

Alliance gearing protip: Keep one piece of gear with 1% hit on you for when you are not with a Draenei. The emblem wand is a good choice if you have a better normal alternative.

*edit I really should read the whole thread before posting. /facepalm

Edited, Jan 30th 2010 7:09am by Trylofer

____________________________

When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

Sorry it has been awhile since I last logged into Zam... but just one comment on the info above... I believe that you did not delineate between the priority system and a starting rotation.

In order to get full effect of your Shadow Weaving ability, based on what I have seen, you have to start your rotation like this:

VT MB MF - 3 full ticks

At this point you will have 5 full stacks of Shadow Weaving, which will maintain throughout your SW:P and DP. The reason this is key is that refreshes will not take into account any increase to damage without a recast of SW:P. On most mobs, it is not going to matter when normal questing, but it is imperative for bosses and raiding to use this as your start up. Just something to discuss...

Thanks

____________________________

If the Ocean was Whiskey and I was a duck, I'd swim to the bottom and drink my way up!